The ADRICOSM Pilot Project: a coastal and river basin prediction system for the Adriatic Sea

Abstract

The ADRICOSM project was launched in October 2001, and ended in March 2005, with the main objective of demonstrating the feasibility of a near real time operational marine monitoring and forecasting system at the shelf and coastal scales, with connections to river basin runoff and coastal town sewer systems. The basic system consisted of an efficient network for the collection of marine data such as in situ temperature and salinity profiles and satellite sea surface temperature, a regional (AREG) and shelf scale modelling system, a data assimilation system and finally a coastal scale modelling system. Every week AREG releases 7 day marine forecasts at 5 km horizontal scales, which are used to nest other hydrodynamic models toward the coastal scale. Two shelf models (ASHELF-1 and ASHELF-2) at a 1.5 km horizontal scale were nested in AREG in order to simulate (and in the future to forecast) shelf scale oceanographic features. Another important aspect of ADRICOSM was the integration of the Cetina river (Croatia) and urban sewage monitoring/ modelling (Split, Croatia) systems with the shelf marine model. This integrated model system was used to simulate the dispersion of sewer discharges from the urban area in the coastal waters for water management performance studies. ADRICOSM is one of the first integrated land and marine waters operational oceanographic systems able to meet the urgent needs for reliable integrated coastal forecasts for the effective management of marine areas.